Maple platforms

Dan ed,

Currently my TT is resting on cut-up MDF pieces in my sandbox. As you suggest I need to try some exotic wood on top of the sand.

The fellow who turned me on to the springs had cement floors like you & was surprised by the improvement. Moreover, if you've got any vibration-generating equipment in the rack below the TT(e.g. AC powered devices), the springs above will decouple them from the vinyl. I would also think that most racks act as antennas for airborne sound waves. And then there's seismic activity & traffic on nearby roads.

Cows and coyotes. That's the local traffic in my neighborhood.

They are all still just plank wood, think bigger...

Yes, MDF will handle some resonance benefits due to it's mass... and more than the same thickness of solid plank woods.

All wood platforms can get good anti-resonance characteristics if you go very, very thick. This is where the price, finishing and weight becomes the factor.

There are many people out there that claim that one wood sounds better than the other, but all of them have little to no variance after our two decades of our in-house testing.

It's usually all in the marketing.

A thin shelf made from solid wood can only have a certain mass variance per thickness, period. The lower the mass, the more apt it is to turn into a "speaker". The best solutions are a very, very high mass platform... the materials for this are endless.

Very low mass platforms that are rigid turn into a transducer for vibrations, actually completely defeating the purposes of controlling sonic discolouration. If you look at Audiav's website under "theory" it explains much of this.

You can easily measure vibration and inert resonance of materials and always find that it REALLY comes down to other things besides wood selection. The only things that actually make a significant difference from different wood species is total mass.

So fear not maple, as it is the same as all the other woods dependant on overall mass. Stacking maple on MDF will yield a greater overall mass on the shelf and aid in dampening.